Friday, September 26, 2008

Still not quite 100% and some college football comments

Last night's run was pretty uneventful. I did a nice, easy 6, just as planned. It was a beautiful evening along the waterfront of Lake Champlain.

This morning, I lifted and did stair climber intervals. The workouts I'm doing in the gym right now are designed to be fat burning workouts, rather than pure strength workouts. Consequently, they are very intense, but the weights I'm lifting are well below my max. I start off with one "strength" set, focusing on higher weights. Then, I do a pair of 10 minute "metabolic" sets, which are designed to be tough from a strength/endurance perspective. Each of these metabolic sets includes two lifts, and you alternate between them for 10 minutes. You try to start with a weight that you can maintain the whole way through, and take as little rest between sets as possible. For example, my second metabolic set today was dumbbell squat presses and chin-up grip lat pulldowns. I did six reps per set. In 10 minutes, I did 11 sets of one and 10 of the other. I was soaked with sweat from that set alone.

I did notice this morning that I was still coughing a bit during my workout and I didn't feel really strong. I think the cold from last weekend isn't 100% gone yet. Hopefully, I didn't return to working out too soon; I certainly don't want to relapse.

I'm still planning on doing 22 tomorrow in the rain, and then I'll probably rest on Sunday, or at most, I'll go for a walk or a short run with the dogs.

Tomorrow night, I'll get to watch Penn State in their Big 10 conference opener on TV. Regretfully, it won't be in HD. Ever since getting a satellite dish to watch college games in HD, Penn State has been on a non-HD channel every week.

For the second time in history, Penn State is asking all fans to dress in white, for an all-stadium "white-out". I was at the game the last time this was done, and it was an amazing site within the stadium, seeing everyone dressed in white (except for the Notre Dame fans in the northeast corner of the stadium). This time, the northeast corner will be orange as Illinois is the opponent.

Since Penn State crushed Oregon State who beat #1 USC last night, should Penn State go to #1? Also, how low should Ohio State go, knowing that USC crushed them and USC might not be nearly as good as people thought?

No, I don't think Penn State should be #1, but they have their best team since at least 2005 (12-1), and maybe since 1994 (undefeated Rose Bowl champs). After tomorrow, they go on the road for Purdue, and then have a really tough 3-game stretch that includes nighttime road games at both Wisconsin and Ohio State, with Michigan at home in between the road games.

Assuming Oklahoma avoids the upset this week against TCU, the Sooners should go to #1. I think the winner of the Alabama-Georgia game should go to #2, but I doubt that Alabama would jump that much even if they pull off the win. If Alabama wins, I assume Florida would jump to #2.

I knew that Oregon State had lost that opener to Stanford. I was not at all impressed with them, other than the freshman tailback, when they played at Penn State.

The real statement in all of this, as if it means anything is that Penn State crushed Oregon State who beat USC who crushed Ohio State. Is Ohio State any good at all? They'll have Wells back tomorrow and Pryor is the QB as of now, so I expect a resurgence from them.